1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to data communication systems in general and more particularly to a failure isolation and prediction technique which can distinguish between two or more different causes for a common failure indication and compensate a failure indication count as a function of the event or events which cause the common failure indication.
2. Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,761 issued Sept. 6, 1988 and assigned to the same assignee of this application, discloses an isolating and predicting system and method for use with local area network data communications. The patented system and method has been used in token ring communication networks conforming to the IEEE 802.5 standard operating at 4.times.10.sup.6 bits per second data rates with great success. However, when bit rates were increased to 16.times.10.sup.6 bits per second, a significant increase in reported burst errors occurred.
The increase in reported burst errors was analyzed and it was determined that the increased burst errors reported resulted from normal station insertions and not from station failures. Since the burst errors attributable to normal station insertions do not represent a network failure, it became incumbent to distinguish and compensate for burst error indications attributable to station insertions in the error reporting system.
Unfortunately, the burst error detection process at the stations could not readily discriminate between burst errors caused by a station failure and those caused by station insertion; therefore, burst error indications received at the Ring Error Monitor (REM) include burst errors caused by both station insertion and station failures. If all burst errors are counted, the results obtained are invalid.